Over 60M People Play this Impossible Sheep-Themed Mobile Game Daily

A new mobile game titled Sheep A Sheep (Yang Le Ge Yang, 羊了个羊) has gone viral on Chinese social media, and trust us when we say it’s as addictive as it gets.

Revolving around cutesy sheep and fierce regional competition, the mini-game is developed by Jianyou Technology and boasts at least 60 million players daily in China. To put the incredible popularity of Sheep A Sheep in perspective: The hit video game franchise Call of Duty boasts 100 million monthly users worldwide.

On September 12, a hashtag related to Sheep A Sheep took the microblogging platform Weibo by storm, amassing a staggering 2.63 billion views. Over the following days, multiple hashtags have been trending on the platform as the game has crashed several times due to an excessive number of players.

The gameplay is relatively intuitive. After the initial tutorial, there is only one level to pass. As a classic three-title-matching game, players have to clean up the pile of tiles by matching three identical ones. The tiles matched will then disappear, revealing the ones lying underneath that will be available to pick.

Tiles can be temporarily stored on a shelf with seven slots at the bottom of the screen to facilitate matchmaking. The game is over when the slots are full of unmatched tiles.

One of the main factors that made Sheep A Sheep a viral sensation is how hard it is. Data has shown that only a little over 0.1% of its millions of players have managed to finish the game.

Another interesting feature of the game is that players, who are visualized as sheep, represent the region where they are based, tapping into China’s longstanding regionalism.

However, some have accused Sheep A Sheep of plagiarism and pointed out its resemblance to another tile-matching puzzle called 3 Tiles. Sheep A Sheep’s developers refuted the allegations.

If you want to join the ranks of those who are glued to their screen and slacking off during working hours, you can try Sheep A Sheep on WeChat or desktop or even check out these 10 epic Chinese video games instead.

Cover image via Weibo